What do you get when you cross campus fusion sageuk Sungkyunkwan Scandal with sing-off, dance-off, battle of the divas Dream High? Something awesome is what. The production team behind last year’s cracktastic hit drama Sungkyunkwan Scandal — PD Kim Won-seok and writer Kim Tae-hee — are gettin’ the band back together for a new drama on cable network Mnet, to compete with the Dream High franchise in the new year. Awwwww, yeah.

Sadly, what they’re not going to do is just combine the two shows, and set the musical campus drama in the Joseon era. ‘Cause that’s what I would do. I mean, another Dream High/Glee is been there, done that, but Joseon-era scholars singing and dancing to kpop? Now that’d be something to see. I suppose the double-fusion concept’s a little too out there for most, but hey, in a drama landscape where your competition is vampire alien idols, you gotta do what you can to stand out.
The CJ E&M production is being touted as another Dream High (but more Glee-like than Dream High-esque, which seems like a rather slight difference, conceptually). Essentially we’re talking: high school + popular music + showbiz + hopes and dreams. It’ll be Mnet’s first music drama, as it joins the ranks of cable networks putting out original scripted content to compete with the Big 3. Hopefully it’ll be cast with actors who can also sing, and not the other way around. The market does seem pretty damn saturated lately with campus music dramas, so hopefully this one takes enough of a bent to differentiate itself. If it’s from the team behind Sungkyunkwan, we can at least expect it to be stylish and crackalicious, that’s for sure.

Yet-to-be-named Music Drama will air in 2012, in what looks to be quite the year of cable dramas to come.

Producer Kim Won-suk of last year's hit TV series "SungKyunKwan Scandal" will create a music drama.

An official with media group CJ E&M told 10Asia over the phone on Friday that Kim, who moved from broadcaster KBS to CJ E&M in August, will shoot cable music channel Mnet's first-ever music drama.

The show is set to be composed of 16 episodes and will be in a format similar to that of "Glee," an American musical comedy-drama that airs on Fox.

Kim will also collaborate with "SungKyunKwan Scandal" writer Kim Tae-hee again for the upcoming drama that is aiming for showing in the latter half of next year.

"SungKyunKwan Scandal," which starred JYJ member Park Yuchun, Park Min-young, Yoo A-in and Song Joong-ki, is a fusion history drama set during the 18th century revolving around the love and friendship of four students at Sungkyunkwan University.

The TV series took home five awards during the 2010 KBS Drama Awards and also brought in viewership ratings in the high ten percent range on TV charts during its run last year.